Cumberbatch Today Began Work On New SHERLOCK TV-Movies!!

Taking a break from “The Hobbit” and all their other motion picture activities, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman began “Sherlock” table reads today in anticipation of the start of shooting for the seventh and eighth TV-movies starring the duo as Holmes and Watson.

A ninth installment is expected to shoot later this year.

We got three TV-movies in 2010 and three more in 2011, but all the big-screen work prevented any “Sherlock” from airing this year. This latest (cumber) batch of three will likely hit the BBC in January 2014.

In addition to his work as a necromancer and a dragon in the “Hobbit” franchise, Cumberbatch has five times Kirk’s strength in J.J. Abrams’ second “Star Trek” movie, he’s in the looming big-screen dramas “Twelve Years A Slave” and “August: Osage County,” he plays Julian Assange in “The Fifth Estate,” and HBO subscribers can see him now in the miniseries “Parade’s End.”